[Letters to the editor are welcome on any and all subjects. To
ensure their acceptance, please try to keep them under 500
words. Sign your letter in the text body with your name and e-mail
address as you wish them to appear.]

Mr. Ron Beatty writes, "Once parents have decided that a teen
is responsible enough to start driving, it is up to the parents
to teach that child correct driving behavior."

It would be a mistake to consider a teenager a child, and also
a mistake to consider it the responsibility of parents to choose
for a teen whether or not to start driving. Many cultures
around the world consider the age of menarche in a woman to be
the age of adulthood for both men and women. That age is fairly
reliably 13 years. It is statist nonsense to retard the maturity
of any individual beyond the age that individual chooses to assert
adulthood. It is biological madness to suppose that deliberately
forcing juvenile status on a biological adult is good for that
individual.

Individual responsibility begins at home. Once the individual
has chosen to start driving, it is up to the individual to get
educated about driving. It is not the responsibility of the
parents, any more than it is the responsibility of the state.
It is not properly the decision of parents whether or not someone
else may drive.

If the issue is one of property ownership, then, certainly
parents may require anyone to show evidence of driver education
before allowing them to use their automobile. But, many teens
are quite competent to earn a living on their own. However
hateful pro-union laws preventing "children" from starting
businesses or undertaking to enter the work force may be, these
laws are easily circumvented and widely ignored. So, teens
who choose to start driving should be free to earn money and buy
their own vehicles, and have the related responsibility to learn
to use those vehicles.

It is time to start taking children seriously. It is time to
stop putting off the adulthood of individuals. The reason we
have a nanny state is because people have been discouraged from
taking personal responsibility for their own lives from a young
age.

While digesting the arguments made in Lady Liberty's
essay, I was struck by a couple of points which I'm
sure didn't escape the notice of my fellow readers.

Although the whole essay is quite valid, one assertion
jumped out at me, specifically, that religion is a
matter of faith, while science is a matter of fact.
I'm afraid I can't swallow this one whole. It is
undeniable that religions, at least in matters of
dogma and the interpretations of various scriptures
and holy writings, depend largely on faith. However,
the exact same thing is also true of science,
particularly those branches of science which attempt
to explain the origins of the universe, the earth, and
the human species.

To the contrary of statements presented as fact by
evolutionists, there is no clear evidence to support
the idea that evolution has occurred, or is now
occurring, on our earth. Yes, that's right; despite
what you might have heard from Ross on 'Friends',
there is no unbroken chain of fossil records
describing how life evolved. The various theories of
evolution, which have continuously evolved since
Darwin and his contemporaries, cannot rely on the
fossil record to bear out the postulated origin of
human kind, or any of the other species on earth. Any
theory of evolution requires faith, a zealous faith
which ignores the massive gaps and even more massive
contradictions inherent in even the most clearly
articulated versions of the theory. A kind of faith
that will be invested as long as the theory at hand
frees the believer from the possibility that mankind
may not supreme.

Any scientific theory that revolves around the idea
that complexity can evolve, whether biology, or
cosmology (e.g. the 'Big Bang'), requires faith. We
weren't there to see the event or events happen; we
have no physical evidence that there was an explosion
of matter at the birth of the universe, or that
single-celled organisms spontaneously began to change
into multi-cellular organisms. We must take these
things on faith, and the purveyors of that faith are
the scientists who are originating or expanding the
theories in question. We must take these assertions
on faith if for no other reason than because they
violate the principles which we can demonstrate and
verify, here and now in the real physical universe.
The most burdensome of these principles to theorizers
is causality.

However, discussions of faith versus fact and religion
versus science, either here or elsewhere, are really
only window dressing. The essay goes on to describe
the efforts of various Christian groups to inject
their own beliefs into school curricula. Now we come
to the real problem at work here, but it may not be
what you think.

The real problem isn't those pesky Christians and
their efforts, although they are part of the problem.
No, the real trouble is that those schools exist in
the first place.

The groups who want to force creation into government
schools are statists, no different from the other
groups who have been systematically purging any
Christian influence from the same government schools
for years. (Pick a number of years, be it 25, 50, 75
or more, and you'll probably be correct.) All of
these groups are nothing but statists, delegating
force to be used against you and your children and
justifying that delegation in their own minds and to
each other by dressing it up with their own buzzwords.
If there's a difference to be found here, it's only a
difference of degree. They're all statists of one
stripe or another.

They force the child of their neighbor to attend a
government school, where a government teacher leads
them in a fascist pledge to the state's flag, and then
teaches them the state-approved religion, masquerading
as science. The Christian statists will go along with
all of this, as long as their own theories get equal
time along side the pseudo-science. It is my theory
that they are blinded by a decidedly un-Christian idea
that they know what is best for everybody at large,
and that they have divine justification to employ
their superior knowledge no matter what the cost. On
the other hand, the non-Christian statists see nothing
wrong with forcing their Christian neighbor's child
into a system that disdains and scorns their faith and
its teachings, and heaps ridicule on that faith's
practitioners.

Bear in mind that your money, extorted from you by the
state, is the fuel that makes this whole machine run.

The solution is quite simple. End the government
schools. Educate your children at home, or, send them
to a school which will teach them according to a
curriculum that agrees with you. Without having to
support the bloated government school system, you'll
be able to afford either option. Or some of both.

Now, I do live in the real, verifiable, physical
universe. I am a realist, and I think I have a fair
handle on how things are set up in our world. Bearing
that in mind, I know that the end of government
schools is not near. A monolith with the size and
resilience of the government school system won't be
torn down over night, especially when that monolith is
only being strengthened on one side by Christians who
should shun the whole monstrous system, all the while
being shored up and expanded by teacher's unions and
other vested interests on the other sides.

I'm a realist, and I'm also a Christian. However, I
am not a statist, and as an anti-statist, my advice to
people on both sides of this issue is to vote with
your feet. Get your children out of the government
schools, no matter what it takes. If you think that
the government schools will become compatible with
your Christian beliefs just because capital 'C'
Creation gets added to science class, you're fooling
yourself. And non-Christians need to understand that
having their children in a government school is good
for the school, and nobody else, certainly not the
children.

Your tax dollars are the fuel, but your children are
the cogs that make the whole machine grind onward.
Remove enough of those cogs, and the whole misbegotten
contraption will clank to a halt. And the sooner, the
better.

As spring peeks around the corner, the Free State Project is sending speakers and liaisons to a number of events.

Jason Sorens will be speaking at the University of Pittsburgh, Florida State University, and the Vermont Citizens for Property Rights annual meeting this month, and Amanda Phillips will be speaking at the New Jersey Libertarian Party convention this month and the Minnesota LP convention next month. We also have a number of other speakers at other conventions this month and next.

The Calendar does not contain most of the local groups meetings, so if you're looking to meet up with other Free Staters in your local area, please contact your local group leader: http://freestateproject.org/community/localgroups/
Many local groups use Meetup to schedule get-togethers: http://fsp.meetup.com/

The FSP plans to send leadership representatives to at least 20 states this year, so the chances are that you'll be getting an e-mail at some point this year about an appearance near you.

Of course, we can't forget to mention what will likely be the biggest liberty event of the summer, PorcFest 2005!

If you aren't yet sure New Hampshire is right for you, or if you just want to see the Free State up close before you can make the move, PorcFest is the perfect time to visit, meet lots of Porcupines, and see the many wonders of New Hampshire. If you haven't signed up yet, now is the time!

We're planning many events to take place during the whole week. We'll kick off the week with a 4th Birthday Bash for the Free State Project. During the week, we'll have hiking, touring, 2nd Amendment activities, and even a mock town hall meeting in a real town hall! There are numerous seminars planned and we'll close the weekend with a day of speakers including
Jason SorensFree State Project founder,
Ed NaileCoalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers President,
Michael Badnarik2004 Presidential Candidate,
and more to be announced soon.